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For Communists he reserved his most telling blows: "Was there ever a more awful spectacle in the whole history of the world than is unfolded by the agony of Russia . . . devoured by vermin, racked by pestilence, deprived of hope?" Russia Winston Churchill saw as not only "a wounded Russia, but a poisoned Russia, an infected Russia, a plague-bearing Russia, a Russia of armed hordes . . . and political doctrines which destroyed the health and soul of nations." Of Stalin's purge he wrote: "For all its horrors, a glittering light plays over the scenes and actors of the French Revolution. . . . But the Russian Bolsheviks are not redeemed in interest even by the magnitude of their crimes. . . . They have emerged from the prison cells of the Cheka to make their strange unnatural confessions to the world. They have met the death in secret to which they consigned so many better and braver men."
Irish, Business, Miscellaneous. Irish sympathizers could not forget his harshness in the Civil War; businessmen could not forget that as Chancellor of the Exchequer he rolled up (his opponents claimed) a $1,500,000,000 debt; Liberals could not forget that he had been in eight Liberal Cabinets before he became a Conservative; party disciplinarians disliked him because he could not be plainly labeled, could not be made to obey. Complained one perplexed writer: "It is the ultimate Churchill that escapes us. I think he escapes us for good reason. He is not there." Proving that he was somewhere, Churchill replied that parties changed their programs more often than he did, but added, with magnificent understatement, "I have a tendency against which I should perhaps be on my guard; it is to swim against the stream."
Empire. Last week a few signs suggested that the stream was. changing its course. The solitary sandwich man bearing a banner reading "Churchill" who bumped into Prime Minister Chamberlain on his way to Parliament, the newspaper articles written by journalists who admired his style, the exasperated middle class outraged at too much muddling—these scarcely loomed big enough to conquer Mr. Chamberlain's hostility, the lack of confidence of the people. Bigger news was that last week's staggering events clarified in a stroke Churchill's concept of the Empire, made understandable what had been puzzling and contradictory about it.
In his maiden speech 38 years ago Winston Churchill stated his credo and praised the Boers he had been fighting: "It must be made clear to these brave and unhappy men (the Boers) that, whenever they are ready to recognize that their small independence must be merged with the larger liberties of the Empire, there will be a full guarantee for the security of their property and religion, an assurance of equal rights . . . and what the British Army would most readily accord a brave and enduring foe—all the honors of war." Responsibilities of Empire he considered great; if nations under the British Crown could be healthy and happy "the cause of the poor and the weak all over the world will have been sustained: everywhere small peoples will have more room to breathe; and everywhere great empires will be encouraged by our example to step forward into the sunshine of a more gentle and a more generous age."